CEO Greg Bentley held a press briefing on October 20 at the Be Inspired event in Amsterdam, where he made several announcements: one being the launch of the Bentley Infrastructure 500 – modeled after Fortune 500 – which would identify Bentley customers who are especially successful. Bentley said their business represents $13 trillion in revenue.

This determination is made based on reported net tangible fixed assets – the balance sheet view of the infrastructure. “

These are some of the facts about the companies:

– 92 of top 100 are Bentley Subscribers

– 61 of the top 100 have adopted ProjectWise

– 40 of the top 100 have adopted Navigator

Most top candidates are private companies, coming from geographically diverse locations – all over the world.

The economy is a player in this situation – during a year like this one, the exchange rate is volatile. Many public entities are valued based on cost and others may be valued for what they could sell for. Because of the economy, many infrastructure companies have been working off backlog and have been resourceful in this way. Bentley said this may coincide with employment statistics.

He went on to say that “flat” pretty much describes Bentley’s financial growth right now.

Revenues went down almost 10% in 2009. In 2010 to date, revenues have been reported to be “within sight of 2008 revenues. By the end of the year Bentley predicts their run rate will be back to what it was before 2009. “Maybe our organic growth is the new growth,” he said.

New Bentley products coming up:

– The V8i portfolio extends through various disciplines and operations.

This morning in Amsterdam, the weather alternated between sun, clouds and rain. At the Hotel Okura, COOMalcom Walter welcomed attendees to Bentley’s Be Inspired Conference, an event that recognizes outstanding infrastructure projects around the world. Attendees came from all over the world to see presentations by competition finalists.

Walter showed a video of the first miner in the Chilean mine disaster as he was brought to the surface to emphasize the human side to infrastructure.

The Netherlands is known for its infrastructure – the very existence of the country has depended on windmills and dykes that keep land and sea separate. Walter said that without infrastructure to pump water and keep it in bay, everything would be under water.

This year there will be video recordings of the finalists’ presentations available on the Bentley website.

CEO Greg Bentley talked about resilience and helping the world be more resilient. “We define infrastructure as the way we improve our planet,” he said.

He showed some slides that highlighted the use of Bentley products through out the recession. Bentley pointed out that after the recession hit, there have been more people in front of MicroStation, and although that might be good in some ways, it also means that people are working more hours now.

Other facts:

1)New countries are now reporting usage that weren’t before this year.

2) Bentley has seen growth in Europe’s MicroStation utilization hours.

3) Asia has never had a recession.

4) Infrastructure and plant have had a hard time sustaining growth, geospatial and civil has had some growth.

5) Bentley has achieved some growth in 2010.

6) Projectwise passport adoption has grown greatly in 2010 and is used by the majority of top Design 100 firms.

7) Bentley is ranked #2 in the geospatial market according to Daratech.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) will now provide Davis County, Utah, with information on the properties the church owns in the county. It will then be stored in the county’s GIS database to help with sheltering evacuees during disasters, processing disaster claims and applying for public assistance.

The church agreed to provide the county the shape files for its parcels. County officials may use this data to contact church-owned facilities that may be used as shelters during emergencies.

Developing digital maps highlighting potential landslide hazards on the Big Island is a high priority, to be addressed now by a $60,000 pilot project from FEMA. UH Manoa’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Peter Nicholson will partner with the County of Hawaii Office of Civil Defense and the State Hazards Mitigation Forum to develop a GIS-based mapping and analysis tool.

Introducing “The Power of GIS” from the IAFC in conjunction with the U.S. Fire Administration. The video offers a quick 10-minute view of understanding GIS, geared for fire chiefs and other decision makers.

According to a report issued by ABI Research, The number of navigation shipments – encompassing all current form factors including in-dash, portable, and mobile navigation devices — is expected to grow from more than 100 million in 2010 to 283 million in 2015.

ABI Research practice director Dominique Bonte comments: “The launches of free turn-by-turn off-board navigation by Google on Android handsets in the United States in 2009 and in some European countries in 2010, and on-board navigation globally by Nokia in January 2010, are driving the popularity of handset-based navigation and putting additional pressure on the price of on-board and off-board navigation solutions offered by other vendors.”

to develop a prototype of a new data management software (OpenTreeMap) that will assist communities with the inventory and maintenance of urban forests.

Azavea will work with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS), the City of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), and will use the Phase I SBIR funds to test the feasibility of the development of OpenTreeMap. The Phase I project will develop a prototype of Philadelphia to begin with. If this prototype is successful, Azavea will then be eligible for Phase II funding so that they can extend OpenTreeMap to anywhere in the world.

By designing the OpenTreeMap web application as a wiki-style data editing software, Azavea hopes it will enable a variety of users to participate collaboratively in the tree people of many ages and experience levels to participate collaboratively in the tree inventory process.Until now that hasn’t been possible, even though urban and suburban municipal government have really wanted to manage their street trees and public lands more efficiently.

The United States GIS Data Repository (USGDR), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to “Making Public Data Public”, has partnered with TractBuilder to provide Central Appraisal Districts and certain other county-level GIS programs free licenses of the TractBuilder Tools for ArcGIS, a set of tools counties can use to map polygons and lines according to legal descriptions.